


chapter one, continued

by noellesthings



Category: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Genre: Humor, M/M, References to Depression, These two are a conversational goldmine, alternatively titled: Arthur Panics A Lot, space travel, temporary roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:54:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26235223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noellesthings/pseuds/noellesthings
Summary: “We’re alive!” Arthur says, with joy.Ford taps Arthur’s arm perfunctorily, which immediately stops trying to leave its socket. “I suppose we are.”
Relationships: Arthur Dent/Ford Prefect
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	chapter one, continued

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve become completely and hopelessly obsessed with this series, to the point where it has replaced my brain with a bunch of bizarre-squigglyness that might be words.

Arthur Dent is staring at his house. 

His square, plump house with nearly-but-not-quite symmetrical windows. There is nothing strange or untoward about his house, except the fact that Arthur shouldn’t be staring at it. He is aware, suddenly, that something surprising and possible ominous transpired a second ago - at the start of it he was in the vast corners of space aboard the _Heart of Gold_ , and now he is standing in front of his house, not in the vast corners of space, and staring at it.

“Ah!” Arthur says, loudly.

He looks to the left, as if an Answer would present itself in large block letters then to the right, then back at the house in front of him. 

There is no Answer. There are street-lights, there are cars chugging grey smoke, and there are several dull-minded pigeons. A few people mill around him, unconcerned, but this is normal; Arthur’s house was never one to be surrounded by a great many people, except at its untimely end. 

It is all uncharacteristically normal. Perfectly normal. Abnormally normal. There is zero evidence, in fact, suggesting that Earth was destroyed in the first place.

Arthur’s brain acts like a small child asked to write a three hundred page paper on the asymptotic freedom of quarks - struggling to compute. He opens his mouth. He closes it again.

“Where am I?” Arthur asks. He opens and closes his mouth several more times.

There is no one around to hear his question, except for the house, which doesn’t respond. It’s just a house, after all.

“Where am I?” Arthur asks again. 

Again, no answer is presented, so he frowns. He reviews the facts: Earth looks like Earth, except a couple months ago Earth was destroyed to make room for a hyperspace bypass. 

Surprisingly, Arthur does not entertain the idea that the past couple months were nothing but a strange dream, one with aliens and space-travel, in which the fabric of the Universe shifted constantly with no apparent rhyme or reason. In fact, this idea doesn’t even cross his mind.

Wherever he was, it looked an awful lot like Earth, and smelled an awful lot like Earth, and now had an awfully high chance of being Earth. Unwilling to acknowledge the optimism slowly swirling in his chest, Arthur steps forward to his house. He prays it doesn’t meow, hiss, or wobble.

-

While Arthur Dent was staring in apparent awe at his house, Ford landed rather ungracefully in an alley. He had the unfortunate circumstance of being mid-air aboard the _Heart of Gold_ at the start of the ominous second, and now landed, not on the ship’s floor, but crusty, gum-stained pavement. Ford picks himself up, recovers, and looks quizzically around. 

His first thought is, appropriately, to wonder if he inadvertently ingested large quantities of replicated m-cheese. Replicated m-cheese has a long, well-documented history of causing temporal and physical displacement over vast distances, though Ford concludes that he has not. He hasn’t had anything to eat, in fact, since the previous day.

His second thought is wondering where Arthur is, then where his towel is, and this list narrows into a single, distinct question as Ford steps out of the alley and onto a long street where he finds the Horse and Groom. It looks exactly like the Horse and Groom has always looked.

Ford quickly walks inside.

“Excuse me,” Ford asks the barman, “Is this Earth?”

The barman looks skeptically at Ford, who is now inspecting his surroundings as if he’s never seen a bar before. “Yes, this is.” The barman says.

“Has this always been Earth?”

The barman pushes his glasses on his nose, and frowns. “What else would it be?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.” Before the barman can say another word, Ford rushes out.

-

Arthur is currently inside his house. He was surprised to find his keys tucked inside his favorite jacket, which is strange because Arthur doesn’t remember bringing his house keys into space and back, nor his favorite jacket, and is now running his hands across his furniture with augmented glee. The furniture is solid under his palm, and he feels his wardrobe, then his sofa, then his desk. In his shock he left the front door open, which is why Ford is able to easily run inside.

“Arthur!”

Arthur turns around, stares at Ford with a boggled, wide-eyes expression on his face, and then is very relieved. “Ford!” He says, and hopes that he properly expresses his relief at seeing Ford here. “Can you believe it? It’s Earth.”

“Is it?” Ford asks.

“I hope so.” Arthur says a little wistfully, thinking that it would be quite fantastic if Earth’s entire civilization was recovered, and would no longer be immortalized under the phrase, _mostly harmless_.

“Earth was destroyed.” Ford says. Arthur thinks he says it rather confidently, given the situation. “We are not on it. We could be on a replica of Earth, although it would be difficult to re-create an entire planet this fast since the Meyaklaxon was destroyed.” 

The Meyaklaxon was destroyed three billion years prior due to intergalactic purging. When active, it had the capacity to replicate planets in five Earth years. It was one of the more useful pieces of technology the Universe deemed unsatisfactory, although millions of planet-constructing architects protested otherwise.

Arthur, who knows nothing of the Meyaklaxon or its destruction, decides not to ask. He is still upset that they are not on Earth, though he supposes he’d never be lucky enough to have that happen in the first place. It’s probably a Thursday.

“We’ve got to get back to the _Heart of Gold_.” Ford says. He walks over to Arthur’s window and stares pointedly at the sky, searching and staring, till Arthur walks over and prods him lightly on the shoulder. Ford recovers and says, “Who knows how long we’ve been gone.”

Arthur checks his digital watch. “Ten minutes.” 

“For all we know,” Ford says, after toying with the idea in his head, “this planet is simply an illusion concocted by our softened minds. We are always dreaming, and no-one truly exists.”

It’s not even close to lunchtime, and yet Arthur is suddenly very hungry.

-

They go to the Sandbox. The Sandbox is a restaurant Arthur and Ford used to frequent many times on Earth, back when Arthur had exactly zero opinions about aliens and had no suspicions that his closest friend was one. It has small, rectangular tables, and is the type of establishment where lower-class workers dine - constructors, and the like. As a self-proclaimed struggling actor, Ford’s nonexistent salary is somewhere close to that of a construction worker, which is why it’s socially acceptable for him and Arthur to sit there.

The waitress takes their orders and walks off. Arthur thinks about what Ford said; he wonders if the waitress is real, and how she would feel if someone told her she wasn’t. He feels rather unnerved to be sitting in his familiar restaurant, which is his restaurant in every way, shape, and form except for the fact that it’s not.

“Ford?” Arthur asks, in an attempt to stifle his worries. “Are we real?”

“I think so.” Ford says.

“We have to be real.” Arthur reasons. “Because I know I was real before, so it would make no sense to suddenly not be real now.” This chain of logic is very easily countered, though Arthur clings to it, and puts all thoughts about his metaphysical creation aside. This is easier to do when their food comes.

Arthur goes immediately to his ordered cup of tea. He picks up the teacup, takes a large gulp, then groans.

“For God’s Sake!” He puts down the cup in annoyance. It tasted very nearly like tea, but not all the way. In fact, he preferred the liquid provided by the Nutri-Matic Drinks Dispenser, though he was not about to write sonnets proclaiming so.

“At least they have good alcohol.” Ford says, and pushes his drink towards Arthur in a way that is meant to be consoling. He doesn’t much like it when Arthur is distressed, and tea always seems to be a matter of most importance to him. It’s probably a human tradition Ford doesn’t properly comprehend - though he must admit tea is good.

Arthur leaves the Horse and Groom in an equally dismal mood to when he first walked in; before he was wishing to be on real Earth and hungry, now he was upset about the Universe’s inability to provide him with a proper cup of tea. 

His mood dips, considerably, when he sees the yellow tractors tearing apart his house.

-

Ford stays in the Sandbox after Arthur leaves. He is looking for anomalies in the air, perhaps an Alien In Hiding, which was a device used to cloak aliens that weren’t humanoid but had reasons to pretend to be, but picks up nothing. 

He goes outside, crosses the street, and goes into the Horse and Groom. There he looks for anomalies in the air, Aliens in Hiding, but picks up nothing unusual for the inhabitants of Earth. He does pick up the strange, suspicious looks the barman keeps shooting him, but this, too, is nothing unusual. A lot of people think Ford is strange and suspicious when they meet him.

Giving up, Ford walks outside, looking up for various-colored flying saucers. He happens to do this next to a young couple dining outside, who uncomfortably decide to ignore the stranger standing and staring at the sky as if he’s gotten lost in it. 

At this moment, Arthur runs over to Ford, waving his arms wildly. “My,” he says, panting, “My house is,” then stops, apparently deciding that he is too out of breath to continue the sentence at this time.

“What?” Ford says crossly, pulled from his reverie. 

“My house,” Arthur tries again. 

“Yes?”

“My house is…”

“Is?”

“Demolished.”

“Is that so?” Ford says. 

“Yes!” Arthur replies. He is suddenly annoyed that Ford does not understand the severity of the situation. “It was just destroyed. Completely. Again.”

“Not again.” Ford corrects.

“What?”

“Your house wasn’t destroyed again. A house was destroyed for the first time.”

“But it’s still my house!” Arthur stutters. “Or, well, at least it looks like my house…”

“ _Looks like_ is not that same as _is_.”

“You’re missing the point.” Arthur says peevishly. “My, the, _a_ house that I was going to sleep in was destroyed! I have no place to sleep.”

“Excuse me,” says the young man sitting near them, the one dining with his wife. “We are trying to conduct a proper, sophisticated lunch.” He motions between himself and his wife, and the food in front of them.

Ford and Arthur look at them. 

“So you are.” Ford says.

“I see it too.” Arthur adds, and turns back to Ford.

“What I meant,” the man chimes, speaking to them in the way one physicist speaks to another, more successful one - which is to say, with disgust - “Was that your conversation is distributing my lunch. I ask you stop it at once.”

“Okay.” Ford says quietly. He fixes the man with a look that unnerves even the most enlightened Altmainians of Altmainia; the man freezes, and hurriedly decides he has to excuse himself to the restroom.

“The replica of your house doesn’t matter.” Ford tells Arthur, effectively returning to the conversation. “The replica of my house still exists. We can sleep there tonight, and decide how to get off this version of Earth before it ends.”

“ _If_ it ends.” Arthur says.

“Right.” Ford says. He walks over to a newspaper stand, looks at it, then taps the date written on _The Guardian_. Arthur peers in to look.

“If it ends, then it ends in seven days.” Ford says.

Arthur swallows uneasily. He doesn’t want another planet to end, Earth or not-Earth. “Right.”

-

Arthur has been to Ford’s flat many times in the past, as close friends should. Given the similarities of everything else on this planet, he is unsurprised to find it exactly the same as Ford’s flat was on Earth the last time he saw it.

In his research Ford concluded that all struggling actors must own several mattresses, loose-leaf scripts from plays they would never get cast in, and a musical instrument of some kind. He meets all of these qualifications: owning three mattresses, five scripts, and a triangle, which is most amusing because all the shapes Ford has met generally don’t play music, only criticize it.

Ford announces that one mattress can be Arthur’s - the one lying in a dejected heap on the floor - and the other will be Ford’s - the one lying in a dejected heap on the other side of the floor. 

The curtains to the window are open, and the dim light from the moon shines in, as well as a few stars which are equally dim due to all the light pollution. Arthur looks upon this sight and slumps.

“I hope we don’t get stuck here forever.” He says dismally. “I hope we don’t die on not-Earth.”

“Right,” Ford says. He is, suddenly, reliving the soul-crushing Loneliness he felt in his tenth year of getting stuck on Earth, and plunges into abrupt silence. It’s the same soul-crushing Loneliness that every living organism experiences when inexplicably stranded from their home, although this feeling has been undetected by anyone on Earth, since Earth-beings are primitive, and have not achieved the pure, emotional connection that allows them to feel this. 

Arthur, perhaps from prolonged exposure to Ford, or due to his own knowledge of the vast complexities of the Galaxy, feels it. 

He feels it and shudders, thrown into horrifying silence as well, unable to do anything but feel the numbness creeping up his toes. He feels cold and alone. Whatever paranormal force caused him to feel the Loneliness, then, causes him to reach out and touch Ford on the spine.

Ford leans into the touch almost inadvertently, and it is enough to knock him back, the Loneliness floats from them both and goes to occupy another strandee three planets away. It is a very busy Loneliness, and has a lot to do.

“No.” Ford says with renewed confidence, “We are not going to die here.” Earth, even a replica of it, would be a very dull place to die.

-

Arthur and Ford wake up, not to bright, cheerful sunlight, but screams.

“Ah!” Arthur yells, bolting awake. He scrambles around the room, then into the next room, and all around till he returns to where he previously slept. The screaming persists.

Ford looks around for the source of the commotion, and when he doesn’t find it, sighs. They weren’t the ones screaming, so it clearly wasn’t their problem.

“Ford.” Arthur says from where he is now standing by the window. 

“What?” Ford walks over.

“That….”

“That.” Ford concludes.

The That in question were five identical yellow saucers suspended over London. It is a sight Arthur hoped to never see again as long as he lives, and now that he has, assumes the notion that he is dead. His shoulders relax immediately. Nothing can harm someone who is already dead.

“You’re not dead.” Ford remarks, as if reading Arthur’s mind.

Arthur’s shoulders spring up into their tense, alarmed position. “Dammit!” He says.

The five identical yellow saucers remained stationary, despite the humans running around and yelling below them. For a moment Arthur is compelled to join the screaming mob, but stops himself before he can complete an action that foolish. 

“Well,” Ford remarks with an eerie air of calmness that might be forced, “They’re early.” He continues to stare at them, almost serenely. Arthur admires Ford for this.

Suddenly, the saucers let out a tremendous cracking sound, most adjacent to the sound of a million American splitting a Kit-Kat in half. It is heard by every living creature all across the globe, except for the dolphins, who have retreated far into the air and disappeared.

With the cracking sound a long, thin tube emerges from the first of the five saucers, and from that tube comes a wonderful, pleasant voice. 

_“Attention, people of Earth.”_ says the pleasant, wonderful voice. It was the type of voice a person might hear after staying awake for twenty-three hours straight, and finally having been told it’s time to sleep.

Ford and Arthur, who have already heard this speech before, are now busy panicking.

“What I wish right now,” Arthur says, pulling out random towels from Ford’s large collection and throwing them about at random, “is a large cup of tea and some cheese.”

Ford had been counting his fingers, toes, and the vertebrae in his spine in an attempt to signal the Spinal Hyper-Intelligent Frogs. This was a panicky thing to do because all the Spinal Hyper-Intelligent Frogs have long been presumed dead. When he hears what Arthur said, he stops. 

“What?” Ford asks.

“I said,” Arthur repeats, “what I wish right now is a large cup of tea and some cheese.”

“Cheese? Why would you want cheese?”

“Because it tastes good!” Arthur says. Amidst his panic, he is slightly offended that Ford would question his last-meal, and plods on, “Cheese! I had the most amazing cheese on the _Heart of Gold_ …” 

“Arthur!” Ford snaps.

“What?” Arthur snaps back.

“What type of cheese?”

Arthur flounders. “Cheesy cheese?”

“Was it m-cheese? Or some other type of replicated cheese?”

Arthur pauses, for a moment deciding whether or not to be astounded that replicated cheese exists, or ask what purpose it would have. He decided against both. “It might have been m-cheese.” He admits rather sheepishly.

“Arthur!” Ford hisses. “I told you not to eat m-cheese!”

“You did?”

“Yes!” Ford says. He is pretty sure he did, though perhaps he didn’t.

The cracking sound, which had been growing steadily louder while Arthur and Ford debated cheese, grows even louder.

Ford makes a complicated growling sound that Betelgeusian's only make when they are about to murder their family with an axe, or under cases of extreme annoyance. He darts to his fridge. Arthur watches him open it, pull out a container, and shove it into Arthur’s hand.

“Drink.”

Arthur looks at the container. It’s plastic, and filled with some sort of murky liquid. “What is it?”

“Olive water.”

“Olive water?”

“Yes.” Ford says impatiently. “Drink it.”

Arthur sputters for a moment, then stares at the water with equal blankness. “Why?”

“Olive water counters the effects of m-cheese.” 

The cracking sound is now accompanied by the screaming of all mammalian life, and the synchronous footsteps as people run wildly from here to there.

“If you want to stay alive, drink!” Ford snaps, and the noise outside reaches a fever pitch, so loud it transcends waves of sound and transforms into light, enveloping the Earth in white, majestic brightness. Arthur looks at Ford, and Ford looks at Arthur, who, thinking now would be the time to say something meaningful but unable to express it, drinks.

-

The _Heart of Gold_ is moving at improbable speeds through space when Ford and Arthur materialize on it.

Arthur lands next to a potted plant. His limbs flop around, still reeling from almost dying on almost-Earth. His arm, who is having most trouble coping with all this, jerks to the left in a change to escape, and collides with Ford, who is also busy flopping around. It is a rare reaction to materializing next to a potted plant on an unsuspecting ship, and has occurred exactly three hundred thousand times.

Eventually Ford stops flopping and starts standing up. He looks at Arthur, who is still trying to wrangle his left arm into submission, and says, “That went well.”

“Yeah.” Arthur manages. Then, with considerably more joy, “We’re alive!”

Ford taps Arthur’s arm perfunctorily, which immediately stops trying to leave its socket. He then helps Arthur to his feet. “I suppose we are.”

“Shame about the planet.” Arthur says. His shoulders slump by the sheer force of shame sitting on them.

“Yes.” Ford says. Nothing sits on his shoulders, aside from particles of air. “Good thing we aren’t on it anymore.”

Arthur considers being more crestfallen about the situation on the whole, then decides it’s fine. “Well,” he concedes, lifting his shoulders again, “They really did have awful tea.”


End file.
